Barack Obama made a similar observation in a New Yorker interview in saying: “An explanation of climate change from a Nobel prize-winning physicist looks exactly the same on your Facebook page as the denial of climate change by somebody on the Koch brothers’ payroll.”

His complaint about is that, in the new media environment, “everything is true and nothing is true.” In fact, as the BBC instance shows, it happens across all media.

The real problem with new media is the speed with which falsehoods are spread and the difficulty of providing countervailing corrective information.

I have just faced the consequences of this phenomenon. Last week, the students’ union at City, University of London passed a stupid motion banning the Sun, Daily Mail and Daily Express from the campus.

None of the 500 or so students currently studying journalism at City voted for the motion. Indeed, only one of them appears to have attended the meeting (and voted against the ban).

Yet, on Facebook, a number of people - including current and former journalists - misread the stories about the vote and began to criticise City’s journalism students for doing something they had not done.

Despite my unequivocal statement about journalism students having had no responsibility for the motion, and similar forthright denials by my colleagues, the lie proved difficult to quash.

People picked up on the story days later and, unaware of the truth, repeated it. So denials had to be ceaselessly reiterated. A myth had been created and it wouldn’t surprise me if there are still people who believe it.

It’s not the fault of social media (you can’t blame the platform), but it is a consequence of it, because lies can be passed on so swiftly and indiscriminately.

And, of course, it is also about human fallibility. Lies that play to our prejudices are more easily believed and we pass them on thoughtlessly, exacerbating the problem.

Quoting Obama again, he said of new media: “The capacity to disseminate misinformation, wild conspiracy theories, to paint the opposition in wildly negative light without any rebuttal – that has accelerated in ways that much more sharply polarise the electorate and make it very difficult to have a common conversation.”

Yes, and here’s a further irony. There is a well-known adage that “a lie gets halfway around the world before the truth has a chance to get its trousers on.”